Different pictures painted as 'Rust' trial opens

SANTA FE -- Attorneys outlined vastly different scenarios for a jury in their opening statements in Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's involuntary manslaughter case Thursday.

Prosecutors alleged the young film armorer introduced live rounds on the set of the movie Rust, while a defense attorney contended his client is being made a scapegoat by producers who forced her into a chaotic work environment in order to cut costs and maximize profits.

Special prosecutor Jason Lewis told jurors Gutierrez-Reed brought live rounds on the set and allowed them to become mixed with dummy rounds, resulting in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 on a set south of Santa Fe.

Her work was "sloppy and unprofessional," and she treated essential safety functions such as checking every bullet as optional, Lewis said in his opening statement.

But defense attorney Jason Bowles said prosecutors are trying to pin production errors on Gutierrez-Reed when others deserved the blame.

"Just because there was a tragedy does not mean a crime was committed," he said.

The Gutierrez-Reed trial has drawn massive media interest, in large part because the film's star and producer, Alec Baldwin, was holding the handgun when it fired and killed Hutchins, 42, and is also being charged with involuntary manslaughter. His trial date has not yet been set.

A box labeled ".45 long Colt dummies" photographed on Gutierrez-Reed's lap weeks prior to Hutchins' death showed it had two live rounds in it and was identical to one her father, Thell Reed, also an armorer, had at his home, Lewis said during opening statements at the First Judicial District Courthouse.

There were originally at least six real bullets in the box, Lewis said, and they slowly migrated around the set, due to Gutierrez-Reed's failure to identify and remove them from the scene.

The state knows those projectiles weren't provided by PDQ Arm & Prop owner Seth Kenney - who supplied guns and ammunition for the set - because the box was photographed on the armorer's lap Oct. 10, two days before other dummy rounds purchased for the film were delivered.

"This means that the live ammunition could not have been from the shipment that came in on Oct. 12 ... that was supplied by someone other than Ms. Gutierrez," Lewis said.

Several weeks after the incident, Lewis told jurors, Gutierrez-Reed came to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office for an interview with a detective and said she thought the box of rounds she was loading weapons with Oct. 21, the day Hutchins died, was "peculiar," and she wasn't certain where it had come from.

"Then the defendant offered ... that the day prior to the interview she had asked her father back home to text her a photograph of the box of .45 long Colt dummies they had at his home," Lewis said.

Her father texted her an image of the box he had at his home, and, Lewis said, "the box of dummies she was pulling from on the 21st is identical to the box of dummies that her father had.

"So we believe this is more evidence that this box of dummies with the live round in it came from the defendant," Lewis added.

Bowles said the state's "relatively new" theory Gutierrez-Reed introduced live rounds onto the set is incorrect because it's not possible to tell the difference between live and dummy rounds simply by looking at them.

"You cannot tell a live round from a dummy round by a picture," he said. "The dummies are made in Hollywood to look just like live rounds."

Bowles also directed the jurors' attention to interactions between prop master Sarah Zachry and PDQ Arm & Prop's Kenney immediately after the shooting.

Zachry worked for Kenney, and immediately after the shooting, they spoke on the phone. She then removed rounds from two of the actors' guns and threw them away, Bowles told jurors.

Zachry also moved items from a prop car to a prop truck immediately after the shooting, Bowles said, adding the scene was not thoroughly secured or examined.

"We'll never know what was transferred," Bowles said. "You're going to be missing critical evidence ... because the government didn't investigate."

Gutierrez-Reed, he said, was doing her best to perform the duties of both armorer and prop assistant despite a "chaotic" scene created by producers trying to get the film done quickly and cheaply.

"Baldwin really controlled the set," Bowles said, and violated the most basic gun safety rules when he pointed the gun in Hutchins' direction.

"He either had his finger on the trigger and depressed it or pulled it, causing that gun to fire and hit Ms. Hutchins," Bowles said.

"You don't point a gun at someone ever, unless you intend to shoot them," he added.

Baldwin has said he didn't pull the trigger on the gun; a forensics report paid for by the state says the weapon couldn't have fired otherwise.

Jurors heard from three prosecution witnesses Thursday - all current or former Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office employees - and viewed body camera footage from two deputies who were among the first on scene, portraying the immediate aftermath of the shooting, including efforts to save Hutchins' life.

Baldwin makes a brief appearance at the end of one clip, and Gutierrez-Reed is featured prominently, crying and "hyperventilating" to the point that one of the deputies, after seating her in his patrol vehicle, asked a medic to attend to her.

The first witness, Nicholas LeFleur - a former sheriff's deputy who is now a Santa Fe Police officer - said he'd only been a law enforcement officer for four years at the time and had never been on such a complex crime scene before.

"A couple of hundred people were there," LeFleur said, and he "corralled off" about 10 of them.

Under cross-examination by Bowles' co-counsel Todd Bullion, LeFleur admitted that, in hindsight and with the benefit of additional training he has received since, there are things he would have done differently. He said he should have immediately separated witnesses and collected their cellphones, including the one Baldwin was talking on at the time he arrived.

But, LeFleur said, his ability to isolate the witnesses from one another was limited by the fact that only he and two other deputies were there, and he was trying to keep them nearby.

Jurors also heard from retired sheriff's deputy Tim Benavidez, who told them the scene was "chaos" when he arrived.

After securing the gun and Gutierrez-Reed, he said, a crew member offered to retrieve a prop cart containing two boxes of ammunition Gutierrez-Reed told him had been used in the scene. Benavidez allowed it, but watched the man as he brought the cart and didn't believe he altered any of the evidence.

"We were trying to keep everyone separated so they wouldn't talk about the case," he said, specifically Baldwin.

"It was an active scene; there [were] still people walking around," he said. "Still people trying to get into the church. There [were] just people everywhere, everywhere."

The third witness, Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office crime scene technician Marissa Poppell, testified about how dummy rounds can be distinguished from live rounds.

The trial is scheduled to continue through March 6.